Thread by @dsmart

Remember that statement made by a CIG employee which I wrote about last week, and which caused a furor?

They deleted the ENTIRE thread.

This is why we screen cap such things.

robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/commu…

Meanwhile, over in the Reddit thread that was a result of that statement, Gorf is having a field day...

reddit.com/r/starcitizen/…

Backers were using - against CIG - the very system that CIG created to fleece them repeatedly.

Between CCU melting and LTI, these were incentives for original new money.

When those same backers decided that they already had enough new money in the game, they were using what they already paid for, to get new things.

Which meant less new money.

Now that CIG is DESPERATE for new money, they put in new restrictions to curb and/or eliminate this.

The result? Additional new money.

Yes, it’s despicable. Imagine if EA, Activision, Ubisoft etc, pulled a stunt like this.

The JPEG life cycle in pictures.

Melting is the process of converting in-game items to store credit, then using that credit to buy something else.

No new money.

CCU (cross chassis upgrade) is an item you buy (e.g. $5) which converts one ship to another one of equal|higher value.

e.g. Aurora MR-Avenger Titan CCU converts an MR ($25) to a Titan ($50).

Before they changed it, you could do it for free and only paid the diff in cost.

All these money shenanigans are going on when there is still NO GAME.

And over 50% of the ships being traded aren't even in the game - at all.

Yet, as they did last week, they keep creating new JPEGs to sell. Thus increasing scope.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/9927675…

These schemes were previously incentives to keep backers engaged.

So, many of them would buy multiple amounts of the same ship|vehicle, keep them, then later melt|CCU|sell (Grey market) at a later date when something new comes along.

Then CIG figured out that backers who had already given them money, were more likely to recycle (melt, CCU etc) than spend more on new things.

So CIG slowly started walking everything back, trading good will for cash.

So this LTI fiasco was the latest.

What's worse is that once they figured that the 2000 or so whales who keep giving them money had run out of things to buy, what do they do?

Out of thin air, and not in the game's scope or design, they create new JPEGs to sell. Which is what they just did with the Hercules.

The did this back in 2016/17 when they announced two ground vehicles, ahead of the heavily promoted 3.0 planetary access build.

They fast tracked those vehicles, ahead of previous JPEGs they sold as far back as 2015 and which were still NOT in the game.

The result?

They rushed both vehicles into 3.0; and they neither work, nor are backers even using them because there's nothing to do with them other than drive them around, fall over (shoddy physics) and take HD screen shots.

Aside from fact that 3.0 was the worse build ever.

There was that time, again in 2017, when they went all out and starting selling plots of land.

Then they started selling JPEGs of tanks.

Soon, they will start selling JPEGs of naval craft, for a game that currently has no water bodies.

But it's totally not a scam though.

ps. (it's good)

reddit.com/r/starcitizen/…

There is still one massive thread still standing.

We've captured it, and also put it on death watch.

robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/commu…

CIG sold MISC Reliant in 2015, for $50 /w LTI.

A bunch of backers bought several "copies". Of a JPEG. Then later used CCU to better ships.

It was pitched as a "news" van. For a game that doesn't have ANY of that game mechanic.

Still NOT in the game.

robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/tran…

It went on sale THREE YEARS ago this month, on May 22, 2015.

They raised over $250K within 48hrs of the sale.

From selling a JPEG filled with promised of future functionality, thus - again - increasing the scope of the project.